Character bios

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Now that Season 1 is over, I think we need to reexamine how we're handling character biographies. I was following the True Blood Wiki format of updating each character's bio by episode, but I think this is proving unworkable due to GoT's much vaster cast size. At the moment we're providing a plot summary for each episode, then going back and basically doing another mini plot summary for every single character, faction and location that crops up in the episode. It's an enormous amount of work and simply means we end up with a ton of redundant information. It's also pretty much impossible for us to stay up-to-date whilst the season was in progress (for example, we did a good job of keeping Eddard's article up to date, but at one point Sansa's was about six episodes out of date). Also, whilst it's fine for dead characters, the characters who survive for many seasons to come are going to end up with articles colossal in size. I propose that we demolish the detailed character episode updates and in the 'In the series' section have a more concise summary of what has happened. We source each character page, using our own episode summaries as sources. So for Robb Stark we have a paragraph or two covering all of Season 1 (rather than ten short paragraphs, one for each episode, separately listed) covering only the salient points and then source-link the events to the episode summaries, where more detailed information can be found.

This is a substantial change to how we're handling the characters at the moment, but I think in the long run it will be easier to keep the pages updated and will keep them concise and prevent us from having to write out the same events ten times over. Keeping everying updated under the existing system for Season 1 was chaotic, half-hearted and didn't really work, so I think we definitely need an alternate system. What do people think?--Werthead 20:46, July 4, 2011 (UTC)

You're right. What we're doing now boils down to logging a character instead of properly describing it. Making a concise description and adding season episode numbers as references would be a vast improvement. - KarinS 21:34, July 4, 2011 (UTC)

Sure, it's a lot of work as it is at moment, but this a wiki and the main reason to look up things regarding the characters is to look up in which episode something happened to the character (at least that how I use it). If it happens that during the season not all entries are up to date, then there will be almost a year after it to catch up. And more work means that more people can work on the wiki, which means that the wiki can grow, but should it treated like a bonsai fewer people will join and without detailed contend there is less reason to look up stuff here. - Drudenfusz(diplomacy) 11:02 (UTC), July 5, 2011

If we follow Werthead's suggestion to annotate richly, using episode numbers as source, would that address your concern? - KarinS 16:53, July 5, 2011 (UTC)

Right, I've carried out the change to the Robb Stark page. I like it a lot. It's more concise and shortens the article, removes a lot of dead space and streamlines things without losing necessary detail. I think it's a definite improvement. What do people think?--Werthead 10:16, July 13, 2011 (UTC)

Using the episodes as reference works very well, and it's a much better read in this way - less fragmentary. I'm all for it. - KarinS 12:39, July 13, 2011 (UTC)

I think it would be a good idea to do both. I agree that the main character pages will be more readable and accessible (and easier to keep going) if a summary style is used. However, there is information that will be harder to gather for users by doing so. For the boardwalk empire wiki I've suggested having a separate subarticle for each character in each season. The main page keeps a summary style and the separate article goes into the minutiae of their appearance in each episode.--Opark 77 13:39, January 18, 2012 (UTC)

I've been through and removed the episode subsections on every one of our character articles.--Opark 77 07:19, March 19, 2012 (UTC)